I SO DON'T DO MAKEUP (book #3)

I SO DON'T DO SPOOKY (Book #2)

In stores now! In hardback and paperback!Sherry's baaack!! Sherry and her ghost mother team up in a new mystery. Can they keep The Ruler (Sherry's stepmother) safe? There's robotics, ghost hunting and some serious toilet papering. It's scary. It's spooky. It's fun. Oooooo. (p.s. Of course, Josh is back too!To order, online click here

I SO DON'T DO MYSTERIES (book #1)

In stores now!

A girl. A guy. A ghost. A heist. Yikes!

Meet reluctant sleuth Sherry Holmes Baldwin!

Sherry (short for Sherlock) wants more mall time, less homework and a certain cute boy. Instead, she's recruited by her mother's ghost to prevent a rhino heist at San Diego's Wild Animal Park.

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Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Greetings one and all to the NINETEENTH meeting of The Book Review Club. We're happy to have you join us.

I hope you're all enjoying the summer and getting a little leisure time for . . . reading. Because we've got some great book reviews this month. So grab a cup of coffee, sit down and start scrolling. You're sure to find something that grabs you.

BECAUSE OF ROMEK: A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR'S MEMOIR by David Faber

This is not an easy read. From the first page to the last, I had a lump in my throat.

From the author's website:David Faber survived eight Nazi concentration camps in Poland, from 1939 to 1945. He witnessed the Nazi murders of his parents, brother Romek, and five of his six sisters. When he was liberated in 1945 from the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, he was 18 years old and weighed 72 pounds.

Mr. Faber promised his dying mother that he would survive to tell the world of the Holocaust atrocities. Now in his eighties, he still travels across the country, speaking to all sorts of groups, including school children. He doesn't charge for his 1 1/2 hour presentation. Because Mr. Faber lives in San Diego, he visits many of our local schools and libraries. Child #1, Child #2 and Child #3 have all listened to him and been touched by his words. I'm determined to make it to one of his talks.

This was a difficult book to read. It is rich in details. I had to stop reading and set down the book during the scene where Mr. Faber watched the Gestapo torture, then kill his older brother, Romek. Also, there are black-and-white photographs of people such as Mr. Faber showing his Auschwitz tattoo (161051), Mr. Faber's family, some Gestapo officers, even empty cans of Zyklon B gas.

18 comments:

Yours is an important book, Barrie. We have a woman, Eva Olsson in Muskoka, who does the same thing. She has published a couple of books and has a CD or her speeches She spoke to our school in Ottawa back in 2005, when I was teaching in a middle school there.

Stacy, I know! What happened to us??! I had planned to do a beach reach, but then started reading this book. It felt somehow disrespectful to now review it, summer or not. I'd say we should call each other and cheer each other up, but maybe it wouldn't work!! ;)

Wow, Barrie, that sounds like an amazing book. I make myself read/watch about the Holocaust periodically, just because I have such a hard time getting my mind to grasp the enormity of it. This sounds like a difficult book, as you say, but worthwhile. Thanks for letting us know about it.

I grew up in a Jehovah's Witness family and a little-known fact about them is that they were also in concentration camps during that time. They wore what's known as a purple patch or purple triangle so I heard a lot about these stories. Really a horrific time in history.

That’s a powerful cover and review. I’m thinking back to Night by Elie Wiesel, one of my favorite memoirs if painful to read. Didn’t you say you were reading Night too? If so, is there a reason for this trend?

Being half Jewish, I’ve read many books about the holocaust although not this one. I’d recommend Leon Uris’s novels if you wanted to branch into informed fiction. His best was Exodus. My 15-year-old son took it as one of 2 books on his 7 week canoe trip this summer, although it was written for adults.

When survivors like David Faber are no longer able to tell their stories, I worry about what will happen to us. I worry about my children learning about the Holocaust only in books and thinking the atrocities must not have been as bad as they're portrayed on the page, or even that they happened so long ago that they're no longer relevant.

Books like this one are so very important, as are David Faber and others willing to share pieces of their souls by telling their painful stories over and over again.